


Wild tigers I have known

by dwellingondreams



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Arranged Marriage, Canon Divergence - Robert's Rebellion, Character Study, Cousin Incest, Dubious Consent, Estermont (ASoIaF), Extramarital Affairs, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, House Baratheon, House Estermont, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Infidelity, King Robert Baratheon, Morning Sickness, One Shot, POV Female Character, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Sexism, Period-Typical Underage, Pre-A Game of Thrones, Pre-Canon, Pregnancy, Present Tense, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26453650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwellingondreams/pseuds/dwellingondreams
Summary: "You keep your heart from your chest./It'll be gone, just like the rest." - Emily Jane White, 'Wild Tigers I Have Known'.Ned once told her she would have a much easier time wedding south than Lya- amiable, he said, amiable, eager to please, the wolf who would gladly shed her furs for some gossamer and lace, her leather boots for some silk slippers. Sometimes she barely recognizes herself in the looking glass. It’s too hot to wear her hair down so she usually braids it in a crown behind her ‘real’ crown, the golden circlet sculpted into delicately arching antlers, a smaller, lighter version of Robert’s, so dainty and demure.The pregnancy has already begun to fill out her long face some- along with her rapidly swelling hands and feet- and she has not worn Stark colors since her wedding day. Yet Robert likes her in soft greys, gentle blues, maidenly whites, even forest greens. Anything that reminds him of Lyanna, who always favored cooler colors in her dress.
Relationships: Benjen Stark & Brandon Stark, Benjen Stark & Lyanna Stark, Benjen Stark & Ned Stark, Jaime Lannister & Benjen Stark, Robert Baratheon/Benjen Stark
Comments: 58
Kudos: 209





	Wild tigers I have known

The sea is a murky shade of green, the sky is a stormy tinge of green, and when Berena retches over the side of the ship named for her sister, the bile comes up green. She is saved further indignity by the simple fact that they are swiftly approaching Estermont’s small harbor, and thus her sickness is the least of anyone’s concerns. She prefers it that way. When she was a child she adored to be fussed over, craved attention, would do anything for it- Lyanna’s little pet, the servants would call her, ruffling her braided brown hair as she scurried by, sweet little Berena, trailing after her older siblings and yapping like a kennel pup. 

Now, after six months of marriage and six months as queen, eighteen weeks gone with the king’s heir, Berena has learned to crave anonymity instead. Everywhere, everyone, all the time, they are looking at her, sympathetic smiles, coddling tones, as if she were a child in need of reassurance, asking after her health, wondering silently if her skinny, lanky build, all twiggy limbs and flat chest and no hips will be any good for bearing Robert the heirs he needs. She is sick of being inspected and examined, laid out on beds like a ragdoll while maesters tut and take notes, sick of being paraded around court- see how fine and happy everything is, we have a Baratheon king and a Stark queen, see how they smile and wave-

She would have avoided this trip, had hoped to when her pregnancy was confirmed a scant week before they were to depart, but Robert was insistent, and as always, will have his way in the end. She does not think he demanded her company out of spite, or even lust- he has not tried to truly bed her since the news that she was with child, although he has had her take him in her hand and in her mouth many times over, what she once might have avoided with a demure suggestion that they needs focus on making an heir or a plea of a maiden’s ignorance.

She simply thinks he is eager to be free of the pressures of court and his grim-faced council, eager to be back among friendly faces, his mother’s kin, and of course he must bring his wife along on this sojourn, he cannot come to Estermont empty-handed. They helped put him on the throne, and Robert has always remembered his allies well, he is very generous, even open-handed in that sense. His Estermont uncles stayed for the first six months of his reign and only departed after his wedding. Now they must absolutely be repaid. 

The ship rocks beside the rickety docks, and she bites back another retch; there is nothing left in her belly to come up, unless you count the babe. The thought almost makes her snort with laughter; she imagines hacking up a little apple sized Robert, although his son must be bigger than that by now. His son. It has to be a son. It will be a son because that is what everyone wants, what everyone needs, the perfect Baratheon prince, the spitting image of his father, black of hair and blue of eye. If it is a daughter Tywin might very well deposit Cersei naked as her name day on their doorstep a week later with a suggestion to try a new broodmare. 

Her mother birthed four healthy children, and her first two were sons. Berena can too. 

“Take heart, Your Grace,” Archibald Yronwood all but booms in her ear. “There’ll be no more greenguts for some time, I should say!” 

Berena nearly vaults overboard in surprise, although it takes a special sort of ignorance to not notice a man as big as Yronwood creeping up on you. The popular claim is that Robert named Ser Archibald to his Kingsguard because the Yronwoods have always been rivals to the Martells. Berena is more inclined to believe that it was because Archibald is one of the few men in Westeros who may be as strong and deadly with a warhammer as him. Six and a half feet tall, a true barrel of a man with the belly to match, bald as a boulder and no neck at all, eyes like blue chips painted onto his tanned face. 

They’ve struck up something of a rapport over the course of this journey if only because they were both sick as dogs. The Yronwoods appear to be no more a seafaring house than the Starks. She’d be vomiting in one bucket, trying in vain not to spatter sick across her summer silks, while Archibald would be bent over another, hacking and guffawing in his gleaming white armor. 

She rather likes him, Ser Arch, as the servants refer to him behind his back. He reminds her of Brandon in the way he carries himself, as quick to laugh as he is to shout in outrage. One would think Robert would remind her of her brother most of all. She supposes he should. They were not so drastically different, he and Brandon. Cocky, headstrong eldest sons, handsome and charismatic, chasing skirts and cracking drunken japes at feasts. 

But it is different. Brandon was not her husband, he was her brother. She was his little Beri. He doted on her, even more than Lyanna, whose affection was careless, erratic, even, in that sisterly way. Brandon was the big brother, the one who played the monster in their games and when he caught her would toss her up in the air, shrieking, and catch her again, who would tickle her until she choked and muss snow in her hair and correct how she held the reins or how she strung her bow. 

Sometimes she hated how he’d tease and tease some more when she was angry, but he was always there, he gave her what Father could not, she never feared his disapproval or worse, his indifference. When he saw her his eyes would light up and he’d insist on introducing her to all his friends- “My baby sister, the most beautiful maid in the North,” because he knew exactly how much she hated to hear his tall tales. He knew she needed the reassurance. The attention.

She smiles warmly at Ser Arch now, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand, although she should use a kerchief, it is very unqueenly of her. “For you, maybe. For me, my trials are just beginning,” she rests a hand on the swell of her belly, visible through the thin material of her gown. She is still not used to southern fashions, but she cannot be a queen and still dress like a daughter of Winterfell, and she would not want to, in this weather. Estermont is sweltering, despite the skies threatening a storm. 

Ned once told her she would have a much easier time wedding south than Lya- amiable, he said, amiable, eager to please, the wolf who would gladly shed her furs for some gossamer and lace, her leather boots for some silk slippers. Sometimes she barely recognizes herself in the looking glass. It’s too hot to wear her hair down so she usually braids it in a crown behind her ‘real’ crown, the golden circlet sculpted into delicately arching antlers, a smaller, lighter version of Robert’s, so dainty and demure. 

The pregnancy has already begun to fill out her long face some- along with her rapidly swelling hands and feet- and she has not worn Stark colors since her wedding day. Yet Robert likes her in soft greys, gentle blues, maidenly whites, even forest greens. Anything that reminds him of Lyanna, who always favored cooler colors in her dress. Berena prefers warmer shades of Baratheon yellows, of orange and umber and reds and scarlets, even rich pinks and demure browns. She feels they bring a little color to her wan cheeks, that they brighten her limpid brown hair. They make her feel lively, vibrant, like she could really play act at royalty in them. 

But today, of course, they are honoring House Estermont, and so Robert’s tunic is dark sea green, his belt studded with emeralds that bring out the rich blue of his eyes, and her diaphanous summer gown is a much paler shade of the same color, save for the elaborately tied sash struck through with a silver pin crafted in the shape of a stag’s head. Sometimes she wants to take that pin and jab it through someone’s eye socket. She looks washed out and sickly in green; it emphasis how pale her grey eyes are, almost a watery blue, and how plain her hair is, nothing like Lyanna or Brandon’s lush dark waves.

“Trials?” Ser Arch guffaws, shaking his head in bemusement. “Your Grace, you’ve a funny way of saying travels. You’d think we were charging into battle, eh Massey?”

Ser Justin chuckles, even as he leads Berena into her proper place on the gangplank.

Robert has brought just three knights of his Kingsguard on this trip with them- Yronwood, Lannister, and Justin Massey, who is big and blonde and pink-cheeked, his hair such a white blonde it almost seems to blend in with his armor and his fine new cloak. She does not mind him much either, although Ser Barristan, she knows, thinks him too glib and casual about the honor recently bestowed upon him. But Robert did not have the time nor patience to only recruit the most sober and stoic of men for his Kingsguard. He settled for the ones who could kill a man and laugh about it by the time they sat down for dinner. 

Brandon was one of those sort of men, she supposes. Ser Jaime certainly is, although he holds himself apart, as is expected. Tywin is still steaming mad about Robert’s refusal of Cersei’s hand, instead trying to foist it off onto Stannis- that offered betrothal has not been declined, nor has it been formalized. It is painfully obvious that the Old Lion is waiting to see whether Berena can bear Robert a son or not. If not, he does not wish to have come this far only to have wasted Cersei’s hand on a second son, even when that son is currently Robert’s heir and Lord of Dragonstone, the ancestral seat of princes. 

That Robert took Jon Arryn’s advice and did not exile Tywin’s son to the Night’s Watch, as Ned had suggested, must also rankle at him. Is Jaime keeping his position an honor or a threat, as Aerys supposedly thought he’d hold the Lannisters off with Tywin’s son in his clawed hands? That did not stop them from sacking the city once; Berena doesn’t see why it would stop them from doing it again.

Only this time the smallfolk might pull Tywin down from his splendid white warhorse and smash his golden face in. They still spit to hear the name Lannister in the streets, nearly two years later. They still sneer and shudder to think back on it. From the slums to the manses they remember the atrocities his men committed, and from the singers to the whores to the smiths there are few among them who has not lost a friend or relation to the sack. Cersei may be lucky in her way to be safe at home, Berena thinks. She would never dare ride down the city streets without a hundred bristling spears around her, her family name is so loathed. 

Or perhaps not. They say she is extraordinarily beautiful, and that might be enough to make them forget, for a time. She is not her father. 

No more than Berena is her sister.

Robert has already bounded down onto the docks; he knows his way well around ships and ports, and she doubts he has ever been seasick in his life, iron-stomached as he is. Despite the sunlight straining to be seen behind the storm clouds, his black curls still gleam underneath his crown, and his tanned, broad face splits into a beaming grin when he glances back at her. Berena smiles back out of force of habit and carefully trained impulse. Even when she disliked Robert simply because Lyanna did, it was always difficult not to smile back when he looked your way. He could have an infectious good humor to him, at times.

She has seen more than just his good humors by now, has seen his darker moods as well, but since the news that she was with child he has been very pleased with her, and so she must not complain. This is not easy for him either, she tells herself, a life as king. He reaps the consequences as much as he does the rewards. He is always in a foul temper when he’s finished with meetings of the Small Council, and prone to going out riding with his men as soon as court has concluded for the day- there is nothing like a good hunt, either for decent game or a decent brothel, to set Robert to rights.

She wonders if there are very many brothels on Estermont. Berena is doubtful; it is quite small, even smaller than Bear Island, and quite poor. The Estermonts are lords, not just landed knights, but Robert’s father did not marry his Estermont mother for anything but love. Still, it must have been a sweet tale to tell their children. Berena wonders what she will tell their children. She won’t speak of love. She will needs speak of Lyanna- ‘As your uncle Ned married Aunt Cat after our Brandon died, so I wed your father after Lyanna passed.’ It sounds so reasonable when you put it like that. So sensible. Jon Arryn felt otherwise. Ned tried to shield her from much of the debate, but Berena has a youngest child’s keen ear for whispers. Cersei was the wiser choice, the practical choice, the necessary choice. Robert did not want what was necessary. He wanted his Lyanna, and with her gone- Berena had nearly been betrothed to Elbert Arryn, once, but they were only to be formally introduced at Brandon’s wedding, and that never came to be. 

During her time tucked safely away at Winterfell, visitors trickled in as soon as word came of Father and Brandon’s deaths, any number of men hoping they might charm her and wed her before Ned could come home and put a stop to it- or perhaps hoping he might not make it home at all, so they might be Lord of Winterfell in his place. Nothing was so bluntly stated, for none of them, from wily Roose Bolton, keen on a second wife to mother his little Domeric, to cheerful Wendel Manderly, sent up from White Harbor by his brother, to craggy Crowfood Umber and hotheaded Roger Ryswell, were willing to risk Ned’s ire by being seen to attempt to elope with his sole remaining sister. 

The insinuations were there, all the same. There were no threats or bribes, just high hopes. She could have agreed, or prevailed upon Ned when he returned to raise an army, to let her wed, or to swiftly announce a quick betrothal. She did not. She was fourteen and frightened and just wanted her family back. Marriage was the last thing on her mind. She had assumed there would be a match eventually, with some loyal lord who’d proved his valor, be he a northman or a riverlander or even a Valeman, when the war was over. 

And there was a man who’d proved his valor, loyal to Ned as a hunting hound. 

She takes Robert’s offered arm, feels the wind lash warmly at her face as they move into the port, the clanking of armor and the creaking of ships and the cry of gulls surrounding them. 

“When I was a boy we’d spend weeks here visiting my mother’s family,” Robert tells her. “My cousins tried to teach Stannis to dive from the cliffs, but he refused. I jumped while they were still arguing over it,” he smiles fondly at the memory, and Berena pictures a small, dark-haired shape plummeting down the side of a cliff, towards the green, foaming waves. Something clenches in her chest, for the boy Robert was or the man he has become or the child in her belly. She does not want them to jump from any great heights, ever.

“I’ve never been to an island before,” she says instead, honestly. “The Mormonts invited us, once, but then my mother’s health turned poor.” Lyanna begged to go, she wants to say, she thought the travel could cure Mother, that she just needed to see the sea, like her father Rodrik, always sailing off on some adventure, more fish than wolf. She does not. Speaking of Lyanna with Robert never ends well for either of them. The pain is too great. So, too, is the rage. Both his and hers. When he says her name, she hears it on their wedding night once more, a choked off gasp of relief, snarled in her ear. He has made her dread her sister’s name. Or perhaps she has made herself dread it. Lyanna is everywhere she looks, as of late. A girl in the crowd selling oysters and clams, pushing her trundling wheelbarrow, her dark hair peeking out from under her linen cap. 

“Then you will like this one,” Robert promises her; he is always promising Berena she will like things. Sometimes she does. Other times… well, he hates to be disappointed, and it is easier to just smile and agree. The men of House Estermont have ridden down from Greenstone to greet them in the harbor; the water lapping up around the docks and the stone steps is more turquoise than green, and clear as day when the waves calm; she can see straight through to the bottom. Two gulls are fighting over some scrap of food in the doorway of a homely tavern, and an alley cat flees before them.

She visited White Harbor once as a girl of eight or nine. Estermont’s port is a paltry fishing village compared to the city’s grandeur. Berena is somewhat disappointed, although not shocked- she would have been able to lose herself in a city, contend with merchants and guildsmen, wile away hours in shops and riding through the streets. She has always liked people, always defied the expectations of severe and prickly Stark women, her and Lyanna were never half so cold as the women who came before them, she expects. Rickard’s hotblooded daughters, neither of whom knew how to hold their tongues, the elder wild and willful, the younger giggly and easily distracted. 

The Estermonts meet them decked out in green, and vocally praise Robert’s gracious choice of dress- just as they praise his gracious choice of wife, although Berena knows she has never been gracious in her life. She was not even gracious on her wedding day, she was wildly alternating between a sullen stupor and a giddy sort of conviction that everything would miraculously resolve itself. Ned was even worse off; iron-eyed and hands all soft and apologetic on her shoulders- she wanted to take him by the beard he’d yet to shave off for Cat and give him a good shake. Robert is the king and there was no good reason for Ned to deny him Berena, not when he’d been denied Lyanna. And he could hardly argue in favor of Cersei instead, not after pointedly condemning the Lannisters up and down.

Berena supposes she should be thankful she does not have Princess Elia’s old rooms. They are shuttered and locked away, save for a few cats who go prowling in and out. She has walked by them before, and had to force the bile back down her throat. When she gives Robert his son, will he think of the babe wrapped in scarlet with his fair head smashed to a pulp? She pushes the thought away in order to smile brightly for Robert’s kin, allowing them men to kiss her hand, where a silver wolf’s head ring glimmers. She has always liked jewelry, wears stones and baubles in her ears and around her neck regularly now. Lyanna liked shiny things too, only they tended to be knives and swords. 

There are more of them than she expected, these Estermonts. Even the Kingsguard look a little taken aback, although mayhaps she is just imagining that to comfort herself on her ignorance. She knows little and less of the Stormlands and their houses. She was trained to recognize every northern sigil, know roughly every northern family tree, and was just beginning to educate herself on the Arryns. All that is good for now is making polite conversation with Jon Arryn at dinner, and it is clear he considers her as much a child as he does his wife. 

Berena wishes Lysa might have accompanied them, but she was fresh off a miscarriage. Robert seemed almost angered by it, and Berena senses he has some fear it might be catching, that if Berena spends too much time among poor, unfortunate Lysa, she might develop some affliction of the womb. He did not want to hear of it, any rate, when Berena last mentioned it, so she dropped it. She’s been his wife long enough to know that, by now. Robert’s disinterest is one thing, but his irritation quite another. 

Old Elias Estermont, Robert’s maternal great-grandfather, is near eighty now and was left back at Greenstone with the rest of the household and the women. The rest of them, though are all chatter and buzz, delighted with a royal visit to their homely little island, which has not happened since Princess Rhaena visited some two hundred years ago. There are Elias’ sons, Ser Eldon, Robert’s grandfather, and Ser Philip, his great-uncle. Then there are Eldon’s two sons, Robert’s uncles Aemon and Lomas, both of whom Berena already knows from her wedding, both stout middle-aged men with greying hair and beards. And Aemon’s son, Alyn, and Lomas’ son, Andrew, both eighteen, both newly knighted less than a year or two past, Robert’s cousins.

Philip’s son Ser Gavan died holding Storm’s End from the Tyrells with Stannis two years past, but he has brought down his young grandsons, fatherless boys of thirteen and eight, who are all awe and gapes at the sight of Robert, their favorite cousin turned king. Jaime Lannister helps her into the saddle while Robert is still clapping them on the back and telling tales of the two day voyage from Storm’s End. They spent a fortnight with little Renly before this. Berena likes the boy, asked Robert if he might bring his brother to court in a few years, but Robert seemed disinterested in the idea. She supposes it must be because Renly would be his responsibility at court; he would have to arrange for his education and training at arms, and perhaps he feels it will distract from his future sons with her. 

But that may not entirely be it. Renly looked at Robert as though he were a stranger the entire visit, with a child’s wary and somewhat sullen politeness. Berena he warmed to, took her by the hand and showed her his seashell collection and his pony and the path he takes to the beach to go swimming, but Robert he avoided, not out of fear or anger, she thinks, but a general sense of unfamiliarity, as if he were a distant cousin, not a brother. 

Perhaps he misses Stannis, but Stannis is off holding Dragonstone, and likely loathing every moment of it. He was in no mood at Robert’s wedding. He would have disliked any woman up there as Robert's wife. Stannis would glare at Robert's horse if given the opportunity. The only thing that pleased her about his dourness was that he refused to participate in the bedding. She had been dreading being manhandled and groped by her husband’s angry younger brother. Instead Stannis retreated to a corner to glower, while Ned did his level best to keep the randier men away from her breasts and arse. 

There is nothing randy about Lannister. Comely as he is- the man has women whispering and giggling after him wherever he goes, Kingslayer or not, for many that just adds to the appeal, the allure of danger and all that- he is dutiful. Not to a fault, but he does as he’s told and if he glowers at Robert behind his back for not wedding his sister, does a fair job of hiding it. Berena thinks he has remarkable composure, for Robert often makes drunken japes about Aerys during dinners, and Jaime Lannister just stands there as if his ears were filled with wax. Her, she expected him to loathe, for she supplanted his family’s hopes and dreams, but he mostly treats her as a nuisance but an occasionally amusing one. 

“I’d caution you against riding astride in that gown, Your Grace,” he says, as she arranges her dress in dismay. “It seems more suited for a palanquin.” He keeps a straight face but she can see the flashing in his green eyes, green as this island. It’s not that he’s trying to goad her in a mean-spirited way, she thinks, more the way one might tease a sister or cousin. He seems to find her rather rustic, and that must be a little charming in its way for a Lannister of the Rock, all but born and bred for court. 

“Of course,” she mutters in reply, “I’ll wait here while you fetch one. Don’t dawdle, now.”

He snorts, but suppresses the rest of his laughter as Robert leaps into the saddle and Massey and Yronwood take up their own mounts. 

“How long a ride is it, up to Greenstone?” Berena calls to Massey, who is a Stormlands native. 

He shrugs with his usual grin. “An hour, give or take?”

She suppresses a groan. After swaying aboard a ship for two days the last thing she needs is to be swaying in the saddle, but she’s not inclined to cause a fuss and demand a wheelhouse, either. She was never quite the horsewoman Lyanna was, but she’s a better rider than most ladies, she would wager, and she knows how to use her reins even when forced to ride side-saddle, plodding along at no more than a trot. Robert is thrilled to be back in control, on a horse, and breaks into a canter, racing ahead with Yronwood trailing him and his whooping cousins.

Berena keeps to the sedate pace enforced by both her dress and the babe in her belly, and watches the choking dust rise up from the road and the island unfold around them. A light rain begins to sprinkle, which would not be so bad were it cool and refreshing, but instead it is treacherously warm, indistinguishable from sweat and smelling of the green sea. The mountains are nothing compared to the North’s forested peaks, but still pretty in their way, she thinks, rocky and wind-tossed and dotted with wild grasses and grazing sheep. Greenstone is visible in the distance, group around the fifth and largest summit, an outcropping of stone buildings and the Estermont keep looming above it against the cliffside facing the mainland, a simple square keep of granite and sandstone. 

She does not miss Winterfell as much as she expected to. It was never the castle itself she missed, monolith that it is, but the people who inhabited it, and so many of them are lost to her. Her mother, her father, her sister and brother. Even were she still there, unwed, it would not be the same. Ned has Catelyn now, and Robb and Jon to care for. He has his own family, and she would just be a painful reminder of what he has lost, of what they all have lost. Besides, she does not think she could bear to live out the rest of her days in the same place as Lyanna’s son. Ned has not confirmed it to her, but he does not have to. All families have things they silently agree to never speak of. Berena helped Lyanna plot her escape; she cannot deny the consequences of it. 

_You helped her flee one hunter’s trap, only to send her straight into another_ , the little voice whispers with the wind rustling the fields around them, where small crofters watch from afar, waving and cheering as the royal party rides by. 

_I was a child_ , Berena thinks defensively. _I did not know. It just seemed like a fancy, a game. We had so many wild schemes and dreams. I did not know she would go through with it. I thought she was just being bold. I thought she was just being silly with me._

_She was a child too._

It seems so strange, but in Berena’s dreams, all of Harrenhal is green. The green spring grass and the greenish-blue God’s Eye weeping against the eyelid of the shore. The green of the leaves in the trees, dotted with dew. The green of Lyanna’s gown as she struggled to hold back tears while Rhaegar plucked at his harp. Even the music seemed green; infectious, it would grow and grow like a vine choking at all else until you could not help but weep with the smothering heartbreak of it, make it stop-

In her dreams the Targaryens have green eyes, not purple, and emerald green rings glimmer from the King’s gnarled and scabby fingers, and Jaime Lannister is inducted into the Kingsguard all in Lannister scarlet trimmed with green, and Lyanna’s dress is still green as she climbs the steps of the stands two at a time, and Princess Elia and her ladies are in green, a clump of wildflowers amongst the crowds, wafting in the breeze, and the blue winter roses are nothing compared to the green of their stems. And overhead, a storm is building, the clouds gone green.

The sprinkle of summer rain off the sea has become a downpour by the time they reach the castle. The native Stormlanders are unsurprised and unaffected beyond a few vague complaints about the roads being washed out again. Berena is soaked to the skin and miserable, Ser Arch looks like a wet boar, and Ser Jaime’s blonde curls are matted to his scalp; it’s impossible for a Lannister’s pride to remain intact when they’re wet as a dog and likely smell about the same; none of them have had a chance to bathe since Storm’s End.

As humble as the aged castle looks on the outside, Berena is pleasantly surprised by the inside. The floor of the great hall is enlaid with patterned gold and green and turquoise mosaics, all depicting turbulent seas, brave sailors, terrifying monsters, and the light of the Seven shining down on the island. So too are there gilded paintings on the wood-paneled walls and the seven-sided domed ceiling of their sept. The suite of rooms she is ushered into, trailing water and sodden silk after her, is less than half the size of her rooms at the Red Keep, but nonetheless decorated with care. The bed linens are sea green, the curtains a fluttering aquamarine trimmed with golden tassels. The rugs on the floor are soft and aged jade. 

She orders a bath immediately and spends as long as possible soaking in the heat, despite the muggy air flowing in through the opened windows. She is red as an apple by the time she emerges, but there’s not much to do about it besides dress again, and then she is beset by the women of House Estermont, all eager to make the acquaintance of Robert’s young wife. It is patently obvious that several are angling for themselves or their daughters to become her ladies in waiting. Berena does not have very many at present; she doesn’t know most of the families in the Crownlands, she’s even less familiar with the Stormlander houses, and all in all Robert and Jon Arryn have not been much help in that regard.

Old Elias’ wife, Lady Agatha, is the eldest of them all, Robert’s great-grandmother. She’s a Mertyns by birth, a small, stooped woman with big, owlish blue eyes watery with age, her silvery grey hair preserved under a teal wimple dotted with golden stars. Berena has to strain her ears just to make out the woman’s quavering voice, and she is escorted everywhere by her two gooddaughters, Lady Alyx, the wife of Ser Eldon, and Lady Elinor, the wife of Ser Philip, both old enough to Berena’s grandmothers themselves. 

The only way Berena can tell them apart is that Lady Alyx’s hair is mostly gone to white as she pushes up against sixty, while Lady Elinor’s hair is still a rich brown. Alyx is Robert’s grandmother, the mother of the doomed Lady Cassana, who died when Robert was sixteen. Berena was just a little girl then; her husband is six years her elder, although he scarcely looks any older than she when he shaves. She feels it most at times like this. He was already an orphaned man grown while she was still playing with dolls and puppies. 

Lady Alyx brings along her gooddaughters, Lady Desmera Morrigen and Lady Eleyna Grandison, and Desmera is accompanied by her young daughters, Lia and Mara, who are but eleven and five, and Elinor brings her sole granddaughter, whose father Ser Gavan and whose husband Ser George died at Storm’s End, and whose mother passed of a winter chill. Of all the Estermont women Berena has only ever heard much of the widow Sybelle, who was a regular playmate of Robert’s as a little boy whenever he visited the island. She is about his age now, two and twenty, a short, stocky woman with a warm smile, chestnut brown hair, and an unmistakable air of grief to her. 

Berena feels a kinship immediately, and not just because of all these women, Sybelle is the closest in age to her.

Elinor and Alyx and Desmera and Eleyna are grandmothers and mothers, who want to ask prying questions about her pregnancy and whether she is doing everything she ought to. By the time she returns to court she will be nearing her confinement. Is she prepared? Has she decided what septa and midwives will attend her? Does she know how to bring on labor? What about things for the babe? Does she need more? We are all praying for a son, Your Grace. But if not Robert is certain to get another child on her soon enough, he’s of hearty Estermont stock, they grow like weeds all over this island.

Doesn’t she know she ought to lay on her side, so as not to disturb the babe? She ought to eat twice as much as usual, women are always having fainting spells at this stage, and she’s so skinny as it is, nothing like full-figured Cassana or their own daughters. Is she drinking enough water? Watered down beer certainly does not count. Those purple veins on her legs- ack, she’s so pale they stand right out! What about the kicks? How many? Her belly’s big for this stage- could it be twins? What a blessing that would be. Ah, well, Robert was a big babe anyways- well over half a stone!

 _Gods, please, no_ , Berena thinks. The thought of one babe is unnerving. Two is terrifying. Robert giddily bouncing one black-haired boy on each knee, then passing them back to her to nurse while he goes off to hunt and whore and his sons suck her dry, their sharp little wolf teeth scraping at her teats until they crack and bleed. An entire horde of Baratheon children, strong sons and fair daughters. It should bring her joy. She’s always liked children, hasn’t she? But babes- she can already hear the screaming ringing in her ears. Was Jon screaming, when Ned found him? Screaming for a mother who may have already been dead? 

Lyanna was even younger than Berena, barely sixteen, her hips even narrower. It must have tore out of her, the babe. Berena can smell the blood under her nose, or perhaps that’s just sea salt on the wind. No, she is bleeding- nosebleeds are not uncommon for pregnant women, Lady Desmera assures her, while Eleyna wrinkles her nose in disgust as blood drips through Berena’s fingers and onto her paltry needlework. Lyanna always had more patience for it than her, and that was saying something. Berena preferred knitting and weaving. The mistakes were easier to resolve. 

Sybelle fetches her a kerchief and whispers, “Ignore them, they’re only starved for company,” with an easy grin. Berena smiles back around the bloody cloth.

Dinner that night is a rowdy affair. Berena will freely admit she is starving; she barely ate aboard the ship, and even those who did had to subsist on whatever simple fare the cook was preparing. The Estermonts may be poor, but whatever coin they do have obviously goes straight to their kitchens. In their marble pillared dining hall where the windows shine green light through their colored glass in shafts across the feast and a few of the golden sconces from their days of wealth remain, Berena eats more like a hunting hawk than a little bird.

She permits Sybelle the place of honor on her right side, as Robert talks and talks to his cousin Andrew on his left. They are both thinking along the same lines for once, she is sure. Robert wants Andrew as the seventh knight of his Kingsguard, and Berena is beginning to rally to the idea of taking pity on an Estermont and bringing them back to court with her. Sybelle is lively, talkative despite her sorrows, and seems to innately understand the pressure Berena is under, relieving her of any awkward conversations and steering the talk away from childbirth and her queenly duties. 

Berena smiles gratefully around bites of lamb roast and goat cheese, onions and minced beef and herbs wrapped in vine leaves, and stuffed peppers. She eats so she doesn’t have to talk; her throat is already dry and hoarse from being bombarded with questions and commentary for the past several hours. Besides, Robert has always talked enough for her and him besides- Berena was never a shy or timid girl but his strident voice leaves little room for anyone else’s. She’s used to it, after six moons. It’s easier to smile and nod to whatever he is saying, to avert her eyes and ignore it when the conversation turns crude or rowdy. 

She eats pork and chicken off a skewer as if she were sitting around a campfire, and licks the grease from her fingers like a cat when no one is looking, and sips stew from a clay pot held in both her hands, and plucks the black eyed beans she doesn’t like out of her salad. She is spooning another mouthful of preserved dates and cherries, savoring the coolness, when Ser Jaime makes bemused eye contact. 

He doesn’t have to say anything, as it would be absurdly improper for a knight of the Kingsguard to dare comment on how the pregnant queen consort is eating, but he’s looking at her the way Brandon would when he was about to make some crack about her trying and failing to put some meat on her bones, so she puts down the spoon. No doubt if the Lady Cersei were here she would be making the most lovely conversation and subsisting on air alone. If Lyanna were here she’d have defiantly shoveled another spoon of grape jelly into her mouth. 

Her stomach churns. Robert is near drunk already, and while it is his right to indulge, surrounded by family and friends, she knows what is coming. Perhaps she might plead sickness. She almost wills herself to feel nauseous. 

“Your Grace, are you alright?” Sybelle murmurs it, rather than speaking as loudly as one of her aunts would have, to Berena’s relief. 

“Some air, perhaps,” Berena says, not about to let go of the excuse. The hall is awfully hot, small as it is, and she prevails briefly upon Robert, careful to wait until he is in between stories, for he hates when she interrupts him. “Robert-,” he hates when she calls him Your Grace, too, except in very specific situations where it strokes his pride, for he is not all humble reluctance when it comes to the crown, as much as he will bemoan it, “it’s very warm, might I take a turn with Lady Sybelle?” She cannot leave the table without his permission, no more than she could leave a room without his permission. 

He waves her off. “Lannister, attend to my wife- take your cloak!” he barks after her, but it is not an angry tone, and she feels the infrequent touch of fondness that sometimes seeps in, underneath the resentment and anger and fear. 

He does care for her. He does. He just- he cannot always show it as he should, he is still grieving. He will never love her, she knows that, of course, but he has said many times that she is a good woman and a good wife and she knows he is fond of her in his way. She had a brief bout with a fever a month after their wedding and he was alarmed, demanded all her food be tested for the next fortnight, all her gifts examined. Dornish assassins, he worries about, royalists hiding in plain sight, waiting to bring back the Targaryens and mount their heads on spikes. Lyanna died of a fever, as far as he knows. Robert is not the man to wait by a sickly woman’s bedside, but when Berena felt well again he threw a small feast and fed her from his own plate. 

Bundled in her airy summer cloak, Berena steps out into the only slightly cooler night. Jaime Lannister has done himself the liberty of bringing his cup with him, and finishes off his wine while she and Sybelle walk ahead, listening to the waves crash against the cliffs below. That reminds her of Storm’s End, and Renly’s small sun-tanned hand in her own. Perhaps after their son is born, she will ask Robert again, sweetly, some night when she has satisfied him and he is not searching for Lyanna in her face and body. “All boys ought to have a big brother,” she will say. “Renly could be to our prince as you were to Stannis.” 

As you could have been to Stannis, she thinks. That ship is well and truly sunk. The week before her wedding, when she asked Stannis for amusing tales of Robert in his youth, so she might tease him, might come to know him better. “Amusing tales of Robert,” he’d said, “once I built a model ship to show our father, and Robert set it out to sea so he could strike it with a flaming arrow. Do you find that amusing, Lady Berena?”

“No, my lord,” she’d had to say, for he was still Prince of Dragonstone, or near enough, and her superior at court as Robert’s heir, “I’m sorry, my lord, I’m sure it was just a boy’s mischief, your uncles say Robert was ever into trouble, even then.”

“As evidenced by his bastards,” Stannis had commented, and for a moment she’d wondered whether he’d been the drunk one, but then realized he was simply in a high temper and she was the only convenient target for his rage, Robert’s spoilt Stark wife while he might get the daughter of the man who’d sat out the war, then sacked the city like a wild dog. Or a Florent, big ears and all.

What was he supposed to do? Be the bigger man and love her like a sister? Robert in a rage during a feast would have thrown something, or sworn, or removed himself to find someone to fuck. Stannis favored cutting words and dark looks instead, the tried and true weapon of snide second sons everywhere. She’s seen it in Ned when Brandon would really provoke him, although he was never so callous as a Baratheon. 

Sybelle is much quieter now that they are alone and outside, the wind ruffling at Berena’s hair, which she took down for dinner. Robert prefers it down and brushed until it gleams. Berena would have unbraided it herself on their wedding night, but there was no time. It’s longer than Lyanna’s was, nearly to her hips. Sybelle’s is much shorter, but also much thicker, and looks almost auburn in the light of the braziers. She wonders if Catelyn is with child again. Robb will be two years old soon. Perhaps a girl the next time. Berena would like a niece. She could bring the child to court when she is older, and dote on her as she might Renly. 

“I suppose this is nothing,” Sybelle says, gesturing upon the moonlit sea, the velvety sky dotted with stars, “compared to King’s Landing. You must never even have the time to be bored, Your Grace. I cannot imagine.”

“King’s Landing is loud at night,” Berena says dryly, “all the whores and drunks carousing.”

Jaime Lannister makes a faint sound from behind them, which Berena ignores. Sybelle snickers. “Still. It must be so… thrilling. Especially for a Northerner.”

Berena doesn’t take offense to the comment. It is a little thrilling. Even on the worst days, she does not quite hate the city. She should. She should see it as a den of corruption and violence and tragedy. Lyanna would have hated it. She would have loved to visit it, but hated to live in it. Lyanna liked wild, open spaces, not narrow winding streets and high red walls. Berena thinks after the babe comes, she will go out and begin collecting artisans and tradesmen to patron. Perhaps she can have art commissioned, or jewelry and armor, gifts for Ned and Cat and her goodbrothers. Hunt down some brewers to collect for Robert, or get him a new saddle. He likes gifts. 

“It is,” she says. “But the stars are much more visible here, and the sea-,” she breaks off for a moment, listening to the waves, watching the faint light of a watchtower further down the coast, a golden eye winking in and out. “The sea is lovely at night, too.”

“But not during the day?” Sybelle smirks and Berena huffs in amusement, pulling up the hood of her cloak. “I know what you mean. It’s… peaceful, like this. We used to slip out at night through one of the small gates, when we were children, Robert and I, and go swimming when there was a full moon.”

Berena is oddly struck. It sounds like something she and her siblings might have done, splashing about in the hot springs on some snowy night, watching the snowflakes melt in the steam rising off the dark water. “What was he like, as a boy? It sounds like you were close.”

“For a little while,” Sybelle says. “It was the age. Before he went off to foster in the Vale. We must have been no older than seven or eight. Before boys start to pull girls’ hair and call the names. He and… well, he and Stannis were never close, I’m sure you know. I think it peeved Stannis, it did, to be passed over as a playmate in favor of some silly little girl!”

Berena arches an eyebrow and adds, “For what it’s worth, he’s no fondness for me either, and I am his queen.” 

Sybelle laughs; it rings out loud and clear. “The only woman Stannis should like to see on a throne would be the Maiden herself. We’re all suspicious creatures speaking a foreign tongue, in his eyes.”

“I thought he’d forsaken your Seven. He never attended services while at court unless it was a wedding or funeral.”

“Then… I don’t know. Elenei herself!”

They walk back and forth along the ramparts, talking in hushed voices. Berena does not ask after Sybelle’s parents and husband, and Sybelle does not ask after her father or siblings. Instead they talk of the unbearable summer heat, their girlhoods, one dominated by ice and snow and whispering weirwoods, another by sand and surf and shrieking gulls. Sybelle loves to swim and sail. She enjoys music, and should like to learn the dulcimer someday. She has never been with child, but should dearly like to be a mother someday. And she has had no further offers of marriage in the two years since her husband’s death, nor does she expect to receive any, given her minuscule dowry. She would bring no wealth nor lands to a second husband.

“I expect I shall be a governess for Jason and Larence’s daughters someday, in another ten years or so,” Sybelle says. “I shall have to practice smacking knuckles with rods in advance, and lecturing with a book in hand.”

Berena smiles. “You needn't stay here forever. You’re only two and twenty.”

“Ancient, compared to yourself, Your Grace.”

“I suppose.” Seventeen never felt so old before she was wed. 

“Ladies,” Ser Jaime is saying drolly. “Might we move back indoors? I can feel my blood turning to salt.”

“Yes, I should hate to keep you from your Dornish red, Ser,” Berena rolls her eyes but turns all the same, Sybelle matching her step for step despite being more than a head shorter.

Lannister yawns like a tomcat. “I was thinking more of my bed, Your Grace.”

Berena remembers then, and keeps her tone light as ever, “And who shall guard my door tonight, then?”

“Massey, unless you think his habit of chattering to himself to stay awake might give you nightmares.”

“I think I’ll survive,” Berena retorts, ignores the churning sensation again. It doesn’t matter who is at her door, really. They will all stand aside to permit Robert entry. And why should they not? It is his right. She’s often tried to work up the nerve to tell any of them that she is feeling poorly and they ought to inform His Grace when he comes to visit her, but it feels- she doesn’t know. She could not stand to see the pity in their eyes, is all. Old Selmy is the worst by far, to consider. A man old enough to be her grandfather, listening to Robert spill his seed in her. 

Well, no chance of that tonight. Robert would never risk the babe like that. He can be thoughtless, but he is not so blind as to ignore how badly he needs a son. 

She changes for bed with unfamiliar maids, which always makes her a bit nervous. She likes to have easy conversation with her regular servants, knows the ones who attend her in the Red Keep by name. She has six, all hand-selected for her by one of their many stewards. Experienced, knowledgeable girls and women who have been groomed to see to the needs of the most highborn of ladies. Berena delights in teasing out some of their real personalities. She doesn’t like to be dressed like an object in utter, obedient silence aside from murmured compliments. It feels suffocating. 

She rattles their names off in her head while her bed is turned down. Ada, Gwen, Lally, Reyna, Marelle, and Thea. There. She knew she knew them all. She is a kind mistress to them, she thinks. An easy one to abide by. Robert has yet to bed any of them; they would be quickly changed for another serving girl if that were the case, she has made that perfectly clear. She will not have women attending her at night, then slipping into her husband’s rooms to attend to him as well.

Robert is late in coming to her rooms tonight. Perhaps he’s found someone else. She nods off despite her best intentions to stay up and work on a letter to Ned. She wakes sometime later to a soft knock on the door. Justin Massey is always very polite, almost apologetic. It annoys her. She props herself up on one elbow and mutters something like an assent. Robert is drunk, his footfall too loud, but he doesn’t say anything, only fumbles with his belt. She sits up, ignoring the babe’s faint kicking. It feels like a rabbit caught in her belly, trying to get out. Berena groggily rubs the sleep from her eyes and waits until he is ready for her.

He stays the night in her bed, which is unlike him, and screams himself awake sometime before dawn, then clambers out of bed, vomits in the privy, and goes back to his own rooms, the heat of the day already rising with the sun. Rhaegar, she imagines. It must be Rhaegar and those rubies on his armor, pulsing with every beat of the war drums like red maggots. She’s heard all the bloodiest tales. Berena never dreams of him. When she dreams, it is of Lya, riding near Harrenhal, the sun at her back and the wind in her hair. 

Beyond the initial tour of the keep and the town of Greenstone, there is precious little to do on Estermont, particularly when it rains as it does for the fortnight of their stay. A few small villages to explore, several ancient septs, some built into caves facing the sea along perilous paths carved into the rock face. Berena has little interest in septs. The Estermonts themselves maintain they are of strictly Andal ancestry, but their smallfolk would disagree. Regardless, if the island ever had godswoods, they must be be tucked far away, for Berena does not hear of any she might visit. 

She enjoys the godswood of the Red Keep, even if there is no weirwood. The grand oak tree feels almost paternally reassuring. She likes to sit under it and listen to the winds rustle through its leaves. There are hundreds of names and initials carved into the bark, if you examine it closely. Thousands, even. Friends and lovers and children at play. Chipping away at history. Sacrilegious misuse of a heart tree, many northerners would say. Spitting on the face of the gods. Berena wouldn’t mind, if she were a god in a tree. She would welcome their names. 

They say Estermont was much more forested in the days when the Andals first landed on, a prime spot for building and repairing ships, and good for easy hunting, too. But that has not been the case for hundreds of years now. Now most of the island is sparse mountains and scrublands full of grazing cattle. But there are black pines lashing in the wind, wide-trunked cedars with waxy blue-green needles, and small golden oaks, minuscule compared to the ones she is used to, barely thirty feet tall. Olives too, wild olives everywhere, with trunks that remind her of warped driftwood. Sybelle plucks them by the handful, and Berena develops a severe craving; the babe must like them, too. His Stormlander blood, she decides. Olives and goat cheese and stuffed peppers, that’s what he’ll like.

Her back hurts too badly now to go riding about the island all day, so while Robert cavorts with his knights and cousins, Berena wanders the keep when it is raining, or goes down to the beach with the other women when it is not, kicking off her slippers in and hitching up her skirts in order to bury her feet in the warm sand. Swimming is out of the question, if she loses the realm’s prince because she took a rough tumble in the waves they’ll be calling for her head. But she can watch the others partake. She sits on a blanket on the sand with the soft linen skirts of her pale blue dress puddled around her. She would rather a pale yellow, but Robert prefers blue, and all the most sought after seamstresses agree, it’s best to cater to the king’s tastes before the babe is born. After her son, she will wear what she pleases. Reds and oranges and yellows and browns and pinks. Maybe even some royal purples. 

Ser Arch is half-asleep himself, even in full armor. Berena amuses herself by sprinkling some sand across his gleaming white breastplate, enameled with a golden stag’s head, until he grunts himself awake, sees what she is doing, and barks with laughter. He says she reminds him of his sisters; he has three. Barbara, Cecily, and and Denyse. Barbara and Cecily are both older than him, married with children, but Denyse is just sixteen, his beloved little sister. Berena has always been everyone’s little sister. On a few occasions she was even Robert’s; Ned was the brother he wanted, Lyanna the wife, Berena the darling little sister. They never interacted much, but when they did he would tease and humor her as an older brother might, would dance with her at feasts and watch over her when Brandon had slunk off with some serving girl and Ned was stumbling through his words with Ashara Dayne. 

For a little while, she had entertained the pleasant, well-meaning fantasy that, well, if she must marry Robert, perhaps they could still have that sort of not particularly close but distantly fond relationship. She would give him a few children and he could have his whores and they would be friends of a sort with one another. They could go on fox hunts and hawking and on pleasure barges, and she would look the other way so long as he treated her sweetly when they were together. She would be alright so long as he took no mistress. 

Well, they had their fox hunts, their hawking, their pleasure barges. He is not her brother. She is not his sister. She is not even her sister, which is what he wanted. 

Sybelle comes running back up from the surf, her dress soaked through to the skin, wrapping a shawl around her torso to preserve her modesty. She is accompanied by the two youngest Estermont girls, Lia and Mara, who smile shyly at Berena. After the heir and the spare, Berena hopes she has daughters. She will never let them out of her sight. Robert will want to name one Lyanna. If he could not bed the wife he wanted, at least he can sire the daughter he deserves. She feels sick again, but blames it on the babe’s movements. He is an active one. 

“Let’s make a castle,” Sybelle suggests. “The Red Keep!”

“This is baby stuff,” Lia argues, but is drawn in by Archibald’s blinding smile and blinding armor. Berena draws the moat with a stick and makes a crude attempt at a canal version of the Blackwater while Sybelle heaps the sandy foundation. Mara collects shells, as many red and pink ones as she can find. They imprint windows with the pads of their fingers, and use twigs in place of spikes. Ser Arch finds a leaf to serve as a gate. 

“How does it stand against the real thing?” Sybelle asks with a wry smile.

“It’s perfect,” Berena declares, and then her stomach growls again. “And time for lunch.” She pulls Lia and Mara up on their feet. “Quick, your queen wants a race to the wheelhouse!” They bolt off like shots; Mara slips in the loose sand and falls on her bottom with a yowl. Archibald gamely trots off to her rescue. 

“Oh, the men have ridden down,” Sybelle is shielding her eyes with a sand-covered hand. Berena watches Robert’s chestnut stallion pick its way down to the shore; he is shouting with laughter over something. “I am surprised we never saw it before,” Sybelle comments. “Robert was born to be a king.”

He looks it, truly, tall and broad, his dark curls gleaming in the sunlight, dressed richly with his cloak of black and golden rippling in the wind. He rides better than a man that big has any right to; once he hits the open beach he breaks his mount into a gallop, a cloud of sand billowing behind them as he races towards them. 

“He was,” Berena agrees. Rhaegar ever seemed a prince, not a king. It is not that there was something defective in his appearance, but he was- there was a boyish air to him, even when she saw him at that tourney, a man grown. He looked terrifying in his armor, but once the helm was off his face seemed awfully young and smooth. He did not have Robert’s cleft jaw or black stubble. Rhaegar had cheekbones sharp as glass, a smooth, melancholy voice, and hair like spun silk. Looking at him head-on made one uncomfortable; he didn’t seem quite real, you had to glance away to catch your breath and reorient yourself. 

_I could have been the one_ , she’d thought pettily, when he handed Lyanna that crown. _We both talked about getting justice for Howl. I could have been the one in armor. I am taller than she. I am a faster runner_. But Lyanna was the one with the interest in swords and the joust. Berena was looking forward to the mummer’s shows afterwards, and her comfort of Howland was a tentative kiss on the lips behind their tent. He kissed very well, and she liked the fact that he was two inches shorter than she. It made her feel calmer, in control. 

Kissing Robert feels like being consumed by something. It’s not that he is a bad kisser, or that he bites at her mouth, but that it is- it is not so much kissing as being kissed, being overtaken. The same in bed. Even when- on those few occasions when she thought she could find some pleasure in it, and sometimes she has, but- it’s not in him to give, or when he does, he makes such a show of it, as if she ought to be singing his name. And maybe she should be. But it’s not natural. It’s not something he does without expectation of an even bigger return. 

_You’re not woman enough to handle him_ , that scornful voice says. He’s vaulted down from the saddle, and Sybelle is chatting with him; the wind rips her shawl away, and Robert catches it with ease, then wraps it back around his cousin’s shoulder, laughing. “Berena,” he says, “we’ve found us a boar for dinner. You can ride back with me.”

“The wheelhouse-,” she begins, but he wants none of that. Robert can’t stand the damned things. He bundles her off her feet and deposits her in the saddle in front of him like a knight riding off with a camp follower. Jaime Lannister looks as though he’s suppressing a laugh from atop his own white gelding. She imagines it must make him a little smug, to see them like this. Good, he thinks, maybe. Better Ned Stark’s sister contend with him than mine own. If only Cersei knew what she was missing. Robert rides too hard back up to the road; even though he takes care to keep her from jostling too much, she has to vomit into some bushes. He doesn’t want to risk her spewing her guts over him, of course, so after that she rides the rest of the way with Justin Massey, who never shuts up, as if she needs a running description of every landmark they pass by.

By the end of the first week she has not freckled but she is sure she is nearly a shade darker in her face, neck, and arms. Her belly is as pale as ever, though. She examines it in the mirror, the curve of the bump, wonders if her son can feel her hand outside his home. Names, Robert has begun to talk about now. Eddard or Jon or Steffon for his father. Not Jon, she thinks. Ned already has his Jon. Lyanna already has her Jon. The tears are hot in her eyes, but she blinks them away. A little Ned Baratheon might not be too bad. She’s always liked the name, and she does love Ned, she does, it is just- it is easy, with him the only family she has left, to blame him. 

To think he should have been faster, could have reached Lyanna sooner, could have saved her. Just as he must blame her. He must know, or at least suspect her role in things. How she helped Lyanna become a knight for a day, and unwittingly provoked a chain of events none could have foreseen. If the Martells knew, they would curse her and all her line until they were dry bones in the ground. And she still has the gall to think she deserves happiness. What has she done to earn it? Wept over Lyanna? Wandered Winterfell’s halls in silence, listening to the wind howl outside? 

Sybelle comes to fetch her before dinner, most nights, and they walk the ramparts together, watching the waves and talking of Berena’s return to the mainland.

Berena has always been impulsive, never quite thought things through, but she is certain of this. “I want you to come with me,” she says, “to court. I have- I have no women kin left, and Robert has no sisters. You’ll be like an aunt to our son, and I’ll convince Robert to grant you a better dowry, so we can find you a husband. An heir to a good house. They’ll be honored to have one of the queen’s own women.”

Sybelle licks her lips as if in disbelief, then says, voice low and furtive, “Are you sure? I- Your Grace, I have never been to any court save this one, I have not been off this island save a few trips to Storm’s End as a child… I might embarrass you, they will think me simple and unrefined-,”

“If they think you a country rustic, I shudder to think what they call me behind my back,” Berena snorts. “Don’t argue with me, it’s decided. I need not even ask Robert; it is a queen’s right to choose her own women, just as he chooses his men. We’ll get you all new things in Bronzegate. I’ve meant to do some shopping there anyways, it won’t be summer forever.”

But it feels like summer, over those next few days, despite the rainstorms that settle over Estermont for the second week of their visit and refuse to budge. It feels like summer to Berena, if no one else. A friend. She hasn’t had a friend since Lyanna. Lyanna was all she needed as a girl; she’d assumed they’d remain close well into adulthood, that they would visit one another often, care for each other’s children like their own. But this is different, Sybelle isn’t her sister, doesn’t have to love her because they are blood. 

Everything will be easier to bear with a friend, she’s sure of it. 

“You’re in a suspiciously good mood, Your Grace,” Ser Jaime tells her as he escorts her down a staircase. Berena is forbidden to ascend or descend them alone- what if she falls and loses Robert’s son? She holds his hand loosely in defiance of this edict, but knows he would easily catch her if she stumbled, anyways. He may not be as big as Robert but he is still a very tall man, as tall as Brandon was. _Or maybe he would just let go_ , the little voice says, _or maybe he thinks of giving you a push himself. How sad. The Stark queen’s gone and broke her neck and lost the babe. Oh well, let us call for Lady Cersei!_

“I am,” she agrees, “I am just looking forward to our return to court, is all. Aren’t you?”

“And leave Greenshit behind, never to return?” He takes far too long to pause. “A slip of the tongue, Your Grace. Pray forgive me.” As if he cares. He swore no oaths to her.

“Greenshit,” she says incredulously, trying to work up some outrage or even indignation, but she just starts to giggle. “Greenshit- you call it Greenshit-,” she breaks off into snickers and chuckles, nearly bent over from her laughter. “That is- so- haha- offensive to…” she trails off once they reach the bottom of the stairs, still forcing air out through her nostrils as she tries to contain herself. “You know, my brother wanted you for the Wall, but I think you would have made a fine fool, Ser.”

He says nothing, his lips pressed together in a thin line that could be begrudging acknowledgement or disdainful scorn. 

Robert officially announces Andrew’s addition to the Kingsguard at dinner that night. There is riotous applause and drinking and dancing to celebrate. Berena doesn’t know any Stormlander dances, but it mostly involves men in one circle or half circle, women and another, or spinning round and round until someone breaks into the middle to show off how light of foot they are. Whenever they want a new line leader, they pass the kerchief. Berena was always the best dancer in the family, everyone in Winterfell would freely admit that, and she holds her own here, keeping time and never once tripping up her steps, even in her condition.

She passes the kerchief to Sybelle when she is through, and is laughingly tugged back into line, blushing happily under the praise. 

Robert has not come to her bed for three nights in a row before her suspicions are aroused. Sybelle doesn’t break her fast with her as she has for the past week, is still pleasant but a little more distant in conversation, spends more time fussing over her younger brothers than catering to Berena. Berena knows she is being selfish, and paranoid. Sybelle is overwhelmed with packing up her entire life for a permanent move to court. Of course she is going to be stressed and distant. Of course she wants to dote on her siblings in the time they still have together. She will not be this sort of woman, seeing enemies everywhere. She will not. 

Robert too, is more distant, not that he was ever so close to start, but he avoids her during the day more than is usual for him. She knows him by now. He is not some cruel beast devoid of guilt, ruled entirely by his lusts and vanity. He is no Aegon the Unworthy or Maegor the Cruel. He is just a man, with a man’s weaknesses. But she begins to think twice, think harder. Sybelle still sits at her right side during dinners, but Robert looks her way more often than not. He is not looking at Berena. He has never been a subtle man. Sybelle drinks so she does not have to speak. Berena is familiar with that.

Andrew is out of the question, he is related to both of them. Massey is too loyal to Robert to even consider it, he would inform on her in an instant. Yronwood she considers almost a friend, as much a man can be a friend to a woman, and she will not have it tainted by involving him in this. Lannister is her only option. She gets him alone by retiring early one night, feigning yawns and blinking heavily, then drops the act once he has opened her bedchamber door for her.

She keeps it short and sweet, a simple explanation and a simple request. Did Queen Rhaella or Princess Elia ever make similar ones? His green-eyed gaze is unreadable. 

Berena doubts herself as soon as she is done speaking. This was a mistake. He will laugh in her face and walk away, or tell Robert. Robert will be angry. This was a mistake.

“As you command, Your Grace,” he says instead, and that is it.

Sybelle does not come that next morning either. Robert did not come that night. Ser Jaime lets himself in while she crunches through fresh bread covered in sesame seeds. An olive is rolling around on her tray. 

His silence is the answer she did not want. 

Berena sets down her bread. “Are they still abed?”

“Stay here and finish your meal,” Lannister says. “You know now, don’t torment yourself further. Your Grace.”

She stands up, pulling on her finest dressing gown. “Escort me.”

“You know what he will say. Sit down.”

“You forget which of us commands and which of us obeys,” Berena says.

Sybelle shrieks when Berena enters, pulls the covers up to her chin like a little girl, then crumples into tears. They are genuine. No one fakes crying like that; ugly and wretched, full of snot and spittle. Berena’s heart has never been hard, cold as her blood can be, and it cracks easily, but she is more selfish than she is kind, it’s always been the way of the youngest child. Robert is furious, although he directs most of his shouting at Jaime until the door shuts behind Lannister and Sybelle, leaving them alone. She has never been to the king’s suite here. He’s always come to her rooms instead.

“What do you want me to say?” Robert snaps, as he pulls on his clothes, no need for an attendant, he’s the sort of man who will saddle his own horse and polish his own steel, he hasn’t lost those soldier’s habits yet. “We’ve always been close, she was looking for comfort-,”

“And you were looking for a hole,” Berena says, speaking hard and quick. “And you could not help yourself, you could not find anyone else but the one woman here who I-,”

“Who you what?” he demands. “She will still be your lady, you will still have her with you-,”

“No, I will not!” she shouts. She has never shouted at him before. The last person she shouted at was Ned. There was an awful lot of shouting between brother and sister. She almost felt entitled to it. Catelyn could not shout at him, so she would. Men don’t punish their sisters the way they might their wives. 

She is not Robert’s sister.

“Don’t be a child,” he says. “It was nothing.”

“I will not have women as my ladies by day, your whores by night!”

He goes red at that, enraged at this slight to Sybelle’s honor, his dear cousin. “Mind your tongue around my family, girl.”

Girl. Not even woman. She sees herself through his bleary blue eyes now, still crusted with sleep. A little girl throwing a fit, stamping her foot and shrieking because he took her toy.

“And what am I?” she asks hoarsely, a hand on her belly. 

“My wife,” he said, “and you’ve been a good one, so let’s not ruin it-,”

“You are the one ruining things! You could not have found a whore? She was my friend!”

He rolls his eyes and tosses his magnificent head of black curls. “You’ve known her but a week. Go back to your rooms and finish your breakfast.”

“You are not to have her again,” Berena rages, even as she begins to weep. “I forbid it. Never again. Find someone else.”

That plucks at him, it really does. She has never dared tell him ‘no’ or ‘I don’t want’ or ‘I forbid’ to anything, not in these six months. He takes a step towards her, still shirtless, and while she knows he will not hit her, she is pregnant with his son, he does it hard and fast enough to scare her, and she can’t help but jump back until she backs into a table, nearly toppling a pitcher of water. “You do not forbid anything,” Robert says, speaking furiously but slowly, as if to a child. “You will keep well out of my affairs, and have whatever ladies you like, and you will not rebuke me for what I do in my own time.”

“Ned would be ashamed,” she snaps, and his dark blue eyes seem almost black with rage and guilt, his face reddening even more. 

He makes a fist but does not use it, and shouts for Ser Jaime.

“See the queen back to her rooms. I want her to rest. It’s not good for the babe.”

She goes, shoulders trembling. Jaime Lannister is silent, and then switches off with Ser Arch, who is meant to only stand outside her door, but when he hears her sobbing, comes in and plays cards with her instead, to take her mind off it. By noon, Robert has repented- not Sybelle or all the rest, but repented of confining her to her quarters. He has a splendid array of flowers sent, freshly picked by servants from the fields to the south, blue and white windflowers, yellow daisies, scarlet poppies. She empties out their water and leaves them in the sun, then washes her face and dresses for the day.

The keep is oddly silent, so quiet she can hear the wind and waves outside. The Estermonts have made themselves scarce, riding out this storm like all the others. 

Ser Arch escorts Berena into the rocky gardens, where she sits beside a limestone fountain. 

Sybelle approaches eventually, drops to her knees some distance away, until Berena lets her come closer, like a stray cat or dog. 

“Forgive me,” she says. “Please. Please, I did not- I knew it was wrong, only I- I’ve been so alone, and Robert is so… he makes me think of our childhood. When I was happy. Before everything else. Before the war. I am sorry, Your Grace. Forgive me. Please.”

Berena looks at her, and realizes she feels older than Sybelle, although there is six years between them. “I forgive you,” she says. It is nothing. She was always the forgiving one. She could forgive anything, that’s not the problem. It’s what she can’t forget that is. “But I cannot bring you to court. I will have Robert grant you a better dowry. You may marry at your leisure. But you cannot come back with me. Lia might, when she has flowered, and Mara. Not you. I cannot have it. Do you understand?”

“We might still be friends,” Sybelle says, desperately, and Berena can see how lonely and afraid she is, clutching at any escape, any out. Is it so terrible here? Berena can hear birds chirping and the crash of the surf. It is beautiful, Greenshit though it may be. Has she warmed to the island, even as she’s frozen to Robert? “We- it does not have to mean anything, I would always be your lady, I could help you with the babe, when he comes.”

“Aye,” says Berena. “And Robert would give you a babe of your own, in time. I’m sorry, Sybelle. That is my decision.” She stands. “Ser Archibald, I would like to return to my rooms now. I need to begin my packing.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” He offers her his arm.

Sybelle sits hunched on the bench, her head in her hands. Berena begins to cry again, but keeps her back turned as she walks away.

Berena’s nose bleeds again while she oversees the maids putting her things back in their proper trunks and cases, but it lasts much shorter time than before, barely noticeable, really. The babe kicks as if to reassure her. Outside, the temporary reprieve of sunlit afternoon has ended, and the rain is moving in from the sea, an unflinching march. She finishes her letter to Ned and Catelyn while it patters on the window, asks what they think about names. 

They might expect her to refuse to come down for dinner that night, so of course she makes an appearance. Sybelle sits at the far end of the table; Ser Alyn Estermont takes up her place instead, and endeavors to charm her to the best of his ability while Robert chuckles, then glowers, no doubt reassured he picked Andrew instead, who has no interest. Berena tolerates it, ignoring her building headache. Robert tries to grasp at her hand under the table, a quick reassurance to himself that he has been forgiven. She lets him squeeze, then digs her nails into the meat of her thigh, watches him joke with his uncles around bites of food. 

After dinner, she takes one more walk to clear her head, alone save for Ser Jaime, this time. He keeps his distance until she stops to gaze out over the ramparts, slick with rain. That watch tower is still blazing with light. “I find it useful sometimes,” he says, “to pretend I’m somewhere else, when I see things I don’t like.” She assumes he is being candid out of sheer boredom. 

“Yes,” says Berena, without looking away from the sea. “That’s a nice game. But mothers don’t have much time for them, I’m afraid.” 

She thinks her belly is bigger now than it was a fortnight ago, much bigger. She is twenty weeks now, will be twenty two by the time they return, and it will be nearly time for her confinement. No men will be permitted inside her chambers save the maesters until the child is born. Her entire wing will be closed off to prevent unwanted guests, a septa will pray with her daily, the curtains will be drawn, the room kept dark and quiet so it might feel more like a womb. They will wrap prayer rolls around her stomach when her pains begin, recite verses from the Mother’s Book, the midwife will bring in a birthing stool. 

She closes her eyes. Dark green greets her behind her eyelids, a forest of regrets and agonies. She opens them again, breathes in the sea air. Lannister is watching her with something like wariness. Good. Let him be wary. She will take that over pity any day. “I’d like to stay out a little while longer.” She is not asking.

“As you say, Your Grace.” He shifts uncomfortably in his white armor. Thunder rumbles somewhere behind the crescent moon. 

Berena stays where she is, and listens to it growl while she counts the kicks.

**Author's Note:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. This fic takes place in 285 AC. Robert is about 22 and Berena is about 17. Robert has been king for about a year, and he and Berena have been married for six months. She is about five months pregnant. A visit to Estermont is made reference to in canon as the place where Cersei believes she and Jaime conceived Joffrey, while Robert was having an affair with his cousin. 
> 
> 2\. I've written fics that depict Robert in a more sympathetic manner before, depending on the AU situation, and this is not one of them. His desire to marry Berena was rooted in the fact that Lyanna was dead, and Berena was her younger sister, looked similar to her in terms of appearance, and seemed like the next best choice to him if he could not wed Lyanna.
> 
> 3\. Berena's references to helping Lyanna and feeling guilt over that are because she conspired with her sister to help Lyanna become the Knight of the Laughing Tree, which led to her fateful meeting with Rhaegar. In this AU, Lyanna confided in plans to meet with Rhaegar again a year later in Berena, who brushed it off as her sister exaggerating her interaction with Rhaegar and just talking big talk. When Lyanna disappeared, Berena realized her sister had, in fact, been very serious. Berena believes the relationship between Lyanna and Rhaegar may have begun consensually, but that it did not end that way, as she does not think Lyanna would have willingly agreed to have Rhaegar's child or to spend the next year in Dorne in isolation. Her feelings towards the toddler Jon Snow are very mixed because of this, which is another source of guilt for her.
> 
> 4\. I changed up the Kingsguard purely because I felt like it and I wanted to throw in some new characters. While Robert refused to marry Cersei, he also did not release Jaime back to Tywin as his heir. Tywin is not at all a happy camper, and is holding out hope that Berena will not be able to give Robert a son or any children at all, ignoring for now the offer of Stannis in Robert's place. If Tywin will not agree to the match, Robert is prepared to wed Stannis to a Florent on the advice of Jon Arryn, who is very stressed because of all of this.
> 
> 5\. The Estermont family tree is canonically a mess because the book appendices present three different versions, all equally possible, so I did whatever I wanted with that, and threw in some women because why not. Sybelle is based off the unnamed Estermont cousin Robert was said to have a brief fling with in canon, and who he played with as a child. Her husband and father died of starvation and/or disease while under siege at Storm's End with Stannis.
> 
> 6\. Estermont and its geography, food, and dance are based very vaguely off Cypriot, Greek, and Byzantine stuff. 
> 
> 7\. Berena's hatred of green isn't really rooted in anything in a particular memory, it's just this color she has decided to associate Harrenhal with, maybe because of the green of spring and the prevalence of green as a color motif in courtly literature. 
> 
> 8\. You can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/).


End file.
